Sports and Leisure

In 2012 the NCAA changed a rule concerning football kickoffs. Beginning in 2012, kickoffs took place at the 35-yard line rather than the 30-yard line. There has been some concern that this rule change would affect the return yards on each kickoff. A random sample of kickoff returns from the 2011 and 2013 college football season was obtained, and the yards were recorded for each.45 Assume the underlying distributions are continuous.

a. Use a Wilcoxon rank-sum test to determine whether there is any evidence to suggest a difference in the population median return yards. Use a 5 0.05. Explain this result in the context of the rule change.

b. Use a two-sample t test to determine whether there is any evidence to suggest a difference in the population mean return yards. Assume equal population variances and use a = 0.05. Explain this result in the context of the rule change.

c. Which test do you believe is more appropriate? Why?

d. Suppose more return yards per kickoff leads to more exciting games. Do you believe the rule change has made the games more exciting? Justify your answer.